Minnesota is better off under a Democratic legislature and Democratic Governor than Wisconsin is under a Republican legislature and Republican Governor. Right Wing Economic Policies are a failure; Right Wing political policies are oppressive and not productive of equality of opportunity OR equality of rights.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Thug is the new dog whistle word on the right used to replace the 'n' word. Thug actually means a criminal, but because conservative white men, no matter how physically imposing they are themselves, appear to be consistently afraid of any black man who is angry, no matter how justified, how provoked and antagonized.

Those angry old white men who are conservatives don't make the distinction between someone male and black who is verbally expressive, and someone who is an actual physical threat. I'm not sure they are capable of making that kind of distinction, because their prejudices get in the way.

We have not only racial and ethnicity discrimination in this country, but we have gender biases as well. We cannot reasonably expect men to be free from emotion any more than we would expect it of women or children.

This is a thug, this is a man who is using larger size and threats of physical harm to intimidate. He is actively being investigated for real crimes.

This is not a thug. This is a man who happens to be black, who is expressing anger with a member of the opposing team who not only rejected his attempt to shake hands and congratulate him on a good game, the opposing team member verbally and physically taunted and provoked him, resulting in intense words. He is not a criminal, and is not threatening anyone for doing their job.

The Daily Show and Jon Stewart nail the hypocrisy and blatant, bold face dishonesty of the bi-partisan desires of the right.

No one could say it better.

Republicans and Tea Partiers willingly and happily will trash this country in order to gain power. They don't give a damn about the nation, they are not patriots, they loathe and despise their fellow citizens and the history of real patriots who made this nation, including those who DID find honest and respectful compromise in our past.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The result was that they didn't pay their bills, including paying counties for the recount expenses and not paying the rent, resulting in eviction proceedings.

They still have refused to do the responsible thing, that should be done after that kind of screw-up -- have an outside professional audit conducted, with public results.

Time after time, we've seen the MN GOP leadership demonstrate a lack of ethics and a lack of responsible conduct, ranging from Michael Brodkorb and his upside down notions of family values that he helped promote with the MN GOP candidates, and the shabby bankruptcy, both of the business he ran into the ground, and his personal finances.

We've seen Michel Bachmann and her family, profiting by providing substandard professional services, raking in lots of nice government money for it, along with big, generous subsidies for the family farm that she and her husband partly own. That would be Michele Bachmann with the most costly office in D.C. of all the representatives and senators from Minnesota, with poor constituent service and the worst attendance of any member of the House or Senate from Minnesota. But no money for food stamps or extended unemployment for the people who genuinely NEED it in this state, the working poor.

Now we see ANOTHER example.

Take federal money, apparently making him flush enough to fund his own campaign with a loan, repeatedly, but not to pay back that loan. And we're supposed to believe that doesn't reflect on how he does his job in the legislature? It reflects PRECISELY on his personal relationship to government and money, and directly to how he got his job in the legislature.

Freedom Concerts, Sean Hannity's scholarship charity for the children of fallen soldiers, has violated its charitable tax status, according to a Washington advocacy group.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington alleges that Hannity's Freedom Concerts has "engaged in deceptive and illegal marketing practices by suggesting that all concert ticket sale revenue goes directly to scholarships for children of killed and wounded service members." CREW and veterans group VoteVets have filed complaints with the IRS and the Federal Trade Commission about Freedom Concerts, Freedom Alliance, and Lt. Col. Oliver North.
The two groups hosted a joint press conference Monday to discuss their complaints. VoteVets Chair Jon Soltz questioned Freedom Concert's priorities. "It's appalling and absurd that... 80-90% of the money [raised] is going toward overhead, not scholarships," Soltz said.
"They've made statements that 100% of [all] funds go toward scholarships," said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of CREW. "This is the kind of deceptive marketing the FTC looks poorly upon."

Monday, January 27, 2014

Conservatives continue to wage war on women, in spite of losing women
in droves from voting for their candidates. They are however running
just fine, with lots of money, and lots and lots of tone-deaf
women-hating statements.

We are used to seeing MCPs (male chauvinist pigs) like Rush Limbaugh
speak of and about women in the most demeaning and factually inaccurate
terms. We are accustomed to a lot of old white men more officially
speaking for the GOP doing so regularly and often, on every possible
topic, from rape to reproductive rights, to earning unequal pay and
other unequal treatment insensitively and offensively. Contraception and
other reproductive-related health care is just one example.

A couple of examples gained the right notoriety this week. When women
contribute to their husband progressing, they’re just wives. When a
husband contributes to his wife’s advancement which benefits their
family, he gets called a “Sugar Daddy”. When women want equal treatment,
including reproductive care coverage under insurance mandates, we see
fat old white men like Mike Huckabee referring to that equal treatment
through government regulation as “Uncle Sugar”.

Of course, Huckabee exempts himself from those who are sucking down
on “Uncle Sugar” — presumably he still receives some sort of
state-provided insurance coverage, as a former governor. And let’s not
forget that Mike Huckabee HIMSELF signed state-wide legislation in
Arkansas that required that insurance coverage in that state provided
contraceptive coverage, virtually identical to the ACA coverage. That
presumably makes him “Uncle Sugar” himself.

It must be that abstinence only sex ed that misinforms conservatives
about the facts of sex and sexuality, including libido and
contraception. Because the ignorance on the right about sex is shocking,
as is the hypocrisy about sex and sexuality — and health insurance.

A lingering question: If a woman actively wants the
government to compel her employer to cover her birth control, is she
helpless?
One other nitpick: If an individual state, rather than the federal
government, were to pass a contraceptive mandate, would that be
condescending to women? Because as Bill Scher has pointed out, when Mr.
Huckabee was governor of Arkansas he signed a law mandating that
insurance plans provide contraception coverage. The law did not exempt
church-affiliated organizations.

Then we have Texas conservatives referring to gubernatorial candidate
Wendy Davis as “Abortion Barbie”. Davis is blond, slender, and
attractive, and dresses well. She is pro-choice, and pro-health care,
including reproductive health care.

A recent Minnesota attack on Davis by a local blogger
faulted her for referring to campaigning for office and her differences
in struggling because of a less affluent background as “running for
office” and her opponent as someone who “had not walked in her shoes”.
Her opponent, Texas Attorney General Abbott, is in a wheel chair. One MN
pundit opined from this that Democrats “hate cripples”,
suggesting Ms. Davis had somehow been insulting her opponent by using
common descriptive language and was prejudiced against people with
disability because of doing so.
I was stunned by the statement. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised
at the degree of obnoxious dishonesty that comes from the right, ever,
but it still caught me off-guard.

This is like saying someone hates blind people if you happen to use
the phrase, “see what I mean” in conversation with someone who has a
visual impairment.

The irony — and the ignorance — of the Republican blogger that
relates both to those who are disabled, including paraplegia like that
of the Republican candidate Abbot, and to the reason that we have such a
desperate need for the health care insurance mandate is this, from the Texas Tribune
that shows how little regard Texas conservatives have for those who are
similarly injured and the extent of their suffering and need:

Abbott Faces Questions On Turnabout and Fair Play
When Greg Abbott’s spine was crushed by a falling oak tree in 1984 he
had no health insurance, no paycheck and no feeling in his legs.
But he had a good lawyer and, back then, access to a civil justice
system that was generally hospitable toward plaintiffs. So Abbott did
what many people would do in his situation: he sued.
Nearly 30 years later, as Texas attorney general and the leading
candidate for governor, Abbott is facing new questions about the
multimillion-dollar settlement he was awarded and about his advocacy of
laws that critics say have tilted the judicial scales toward civil
defendants.
Those critics, generally Democrats who oppose the Republican-backed
lawsuit curbs, say the policies Abbott has fiercely promoted over his
career as a judge and elected official make it virtually impossible for a
plaintiff to win the kind of award he got.
“You would think that a young man, at the start of his career,
crippled by an injury, would want to make sure that others that may have
the misfortune to follow in his footsteps would ensure that those
people had the opportunity to be compensated for their injuries in the
same way he was,” said Tommy Fibich, a Democratic donor and personal
injury lawyer. “He instead closed the door because that would help him
get re-elected.”

This is the Geography of Hate map for the nation, reflecting an analysis of the use of the word Nigger, as well as other racial and ethnic slurs, sexual orientation slurs, and a slur on the disable, in Minnesota tweets done about a year ago by Humboldt State University in California. One survey of the data in the study noted:

Areas in Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Alabama show up bright red on the map, as do areas in more central states Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota.

It shows that we have as severe a problem as any southern part of the nation, even worse than some parts of the deep south. We have other racist problems, notably derogatory Asian prejudice, as well as hateful references towards people by sexual orientation.

The mapping of tweet slurs in the state of Iowa to our south reflects similar pattern of intolerance and bigotry.

I took those maps, and compared them to where the conservatives are most populous, and which towns and cities provided the largest Republican donations. I looked at the representatives in the legislature for those parts of Minnesota -- and they were Republicans. I looked at which areas were clearly conservative, as well, regardless of party affiliation, for example, based on votes, in Congress.

We have seen racist social media in Minnesota, and now recently we see the same thing in Iowa:

And of course, we have the Popsie Sarah Palin, darling of the ignorant Tea Party:

Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card.

The unpleasant reality is that we have disparities of race and ethnicity, between people of color and the white dominant majority. And the equally unpleasant reality is that the conservatives in that white majority have perceptions and assumptions and beliefs about people of color as well as people who are part of the LGBT segment of our population, that are inaccurate and horribly derogatory.

And of course, no survey of right wing racism is complete without mentioning the birthers, who include an estimated 64% of Republicans. Nothing says racism like asserting a black man could not possibly be American, the ultimate in us vs. them thinking along racial lines.

In order to try to deflect accountability, conservatives whine about playing the race card. That is their disparaging term for the reality of racism, a reality that like so many other aspects of reality, that they try to deny, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary - including their efforts to deny people of color the opportunity to vote.

It is not only that conservatives appear to routinely deny anything they don't like,regardless of evidence and fact, it is also that they appear to be incapable of acknowledging their own hypocrisy and double standards that they apply to white people they see like themselves, versus the standards and accountability they apply to those they see as different.

They are ideologically incapable of admitting fault, while they are equally dishonest about assigning it to others.

Barber, waving in the photo below is a level 3 sex offender in WI. Level 3, per the statutes, involves sexual acts without consent (although apparently not violence), including but not limited to, ejaculating on someone, or peeing or pooping on them for the perpetrator's sexual arousal.

Reuters reports that one of the two White Supremacists arrested on multiple charges made a deal that includes testifying against his buddy, Craig Cobb.

The younger of the two racists has agreed to testify against the other.

Accused North Dakota 'white supremacist' makes plea bargain
By Carey Gillam Fri Jan 24, 2014 4:07pm EST(Reuters) - A man charged with threatening residents of a small North Dakota town pleaded guilty on Friday to lesser offenses and agreed to testify against a white supremacist who had been working to establish an all-white enclave there, his attorney said.

Kynan Dutton, 29, pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors and agreed to testify against co-defendant Craig Cobb in a deal with prosecutors that reduced his charges from seven terrorizing felonies, Dutton's attorney, Robert Quick, said.

Dutton had moved to Leith, North Dakota, a town of about 20 people, to help out Cobb, Quick said. His plea agreement allowed him to be released from jail on Friday.
Dutton and Cobb, 62, were accused of brandishing firearms and sticks and threatening residents of the town in November. They have been in jail since their arrests on November 16.

"There is no law against being a jerk," assistant state's attorney for Grant County, Todd Schwarz, said in an interview in November. "You have a constitutional right to be a jerk if you want to be. When you start bringing guns and threats into it, it's beyond the First Amendment or anybody's rational interpretation of it."

It is also fair to argue that the conduct of these two thuggish racists has no valid relationship to the 2nd Amendment either.

As part of the deal with the county prosecutor, Dutton pleaded guilty to five counts of misdemeanor menacing and two counts of misdemeanor disorderly conduct, Quick said. He agreed to two years of supervised probation and to provide information about Cobb to prosecutors, he said.

Quick said his client was not a white supremacist but was someone who happened to favor the National Socialist Movement. He is a father with no criminal history and a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, Quick said.

I find the idea that Dutton is not a white supremacist ludicrous, given the activities of Cobb and his followers during their time in Leith. Anyone with the proper anatomy can be a father, and it is sadly true that an estimated 1/2 of those in the various militia and white supremacist movements not only have served in the U.S. military, but were introduced to it in our armed forces.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C., Aug 21 (Reuters) - They call it "rahowa" - short for racial holy war - and they are preparing for it by joining the ranks of the world's fiercest fighting machine, the U.S. military.

White supremacists, neo-Nazis and skinhead groups encourage followers to enlist in the Army and Marine Corps to acquire the skills to overthrow what some call the ZOG - the Zionist Occupation Government. Get in, get trained and get out to brace for the coming race war.

If this scenario seems like fantasy or bluster, civil rights organizations take it as deadly serious, especially given recent events. Former U.S. Army soldier Wade Page opened fire with a 9mm handgun at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on Aug. 5, murdering six people and critically wounding three before killing himself during a shootout with police.

The U.S. Defense Department as well has stepped up efforts to purge violent racists from its ranks, earning praise from organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked and exposed hate groups since the 1970s.

Page, who was 40, was well known in the white supremacist music scene. In the early 2000s he told academic researcher Pete Simi that he became a neo-Nazi after joining the military in 1992. Fred Lucas, who served with him, said Page openly espoused his racist views until 1998, when he was demoted from sergeant to specialist, dis ch arged and barred from re-enlistment.

While at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, Page told Simi , he made the acquaintance of James Burmeister, a skinhead paratrooper who in 1995 killed a black Fayetteville couple in a racially motivated shooting. Burmeister was sentenced to life in prison and died in 2007.

The UFO capital of the U.S. gets new residents: White supremacists buying up Nevada land
The tiny town of Rachel, Nev., next to mysterious Area 51 site, is being bought up by church with white supremacist ties, locals say. Desert enclave is home to annual gathering of UFO hunters.

It was a film location for "The X-Files" and is home to a yearly convention of UFO seekers. But residents of Rachel, Nev., are not happy about the newest visitor to their outpost in the wilderness — church members with white supremacist beliefs.

At the Little A'Le'Inn, proprietor Connie West complained of a mystery man who came to town and started buying up parcels of land. "Who is this person and why are you keeping yourself so secret from this community, because he didn't actually show his face to anybody," she told KLAS-TV.

Richard Bunck, according to property records, bought the town gas station, a convenience store, and a mobile home park, then closed them and evicted the trailer residents.

Pastor Robert Kenniston of the local Baptist Church said his congregation has dwindled to nearly nothing as people left the desert spot next to Area 51, the famous secret military base near the Nevada Site.

Kenniston said Bunck recently visited him, "And he looked at me and said, 'There's a story going around town that I am a neo-Nazi and a white supremacist, and I believe you are the reason for that story.' And I said, 'I believe you are the reason for that story,' and that was the end of the conversation, he told Channel 8.

Residents also said FBI agents had visited and asked questions about what Bunck and his affiliated JHM Church planned to do in the area.

The church is part of the Christian Identity movement, which believes whites are the true descendants of God.

It's not like No Dak and Nevada have a monopoly on the racist militias; we have had our own problems here as well -- and the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified MN as having more than or fair share. From the AP via KARE 11, back in 2012:

MINNEAPOLIS - A federal affidavit says two Minnesota men with ties to white supremacist groups amassed several weapons as part of a plan to attack the government, minorities and others.

The FBI began investigating 31-year-old Samuel Johnson of Austin and 42-year-old Joseph Thomas of Mendota Heights in 2010.

According to an FBI affidavit unsealed this week, Johnson is a former member and Minnesota leader of the National Socialist Movement. He formed his own supremacist group and was planning to recruit others to attack the government and minorities.

The affidavit says Thomas told an undercover agent he also tried to get explosives and automatic weapons to attack "left-wing individuals."

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, left, applauds as Christopher Barber of Two Rivers, a welder at Ariens Co. in Brillion,leaves the podium during Walker's State of the State address at the state Capitol in Madison on Wednesday.
Walker didn't know that Barber is a registered sex offender with two feloniesand three drunken-driving offenses. / AP[/caption]

When Michele Bachmann made her cray-cray-KaRAYZEE -eyed rebuttal on behalf of the Tea Party, it was not well received. In point of fact, pretty much all of the right wing rebuttals have crashed and burned, although perhaps not as badly as the CD 6 representative from Minnesota's efforts.

In an attempt to get it right for the right wing, this time we have not only the official GOP rebuttal, but TWO additional Tea Party replies, who were named earlier this week. One of those who had been touted as a potential rebuttal speaker did not make the cut -- Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin.

Walker has terrible numbers, the kind of failures in areas like job creation that don't fare well, although it seems that the radical right is perfectly willing to overlook those failures at other times. I would argue that instead, given the many scandals following around Governor Chris Christie at the moment, there is a new and additional scandal following Governor Walker like a long, dirty wet piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe, after his own recent state of the state address in Wisconsin. Presumably the GOP is now distancing itself from their troubled and scandal-ridden governors, including Walker for appearing with a convicted felon sex offender.

As covered bythe Manitowac Hub (Manitowac is the county where Chris Barber, the convicted felon resides, in Two Rivers) notes:

Barber wore his welding helmet and work gloves on stage. He waved to the audience in the Assembly chamber as he left the podium and Walker turned around and applauded.
“Every time we help someone find a job, it makes for a strong home, a stronger community, and a stronger state,” Walker said during his speech as Barber and the others stood behind him.
Walker didn’t know that Barber is a registered sex offender with two felonies and three drunken-driving offenses. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported on his criminal record Thursday.
Online court records show that Barber was convicted of third-degree sexual assault in 2005 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Clearly, Barber got out early, presumably for good behavior. And now, after helping to make Scott Walker look good, he is likely to be fired, and to have a harder time getting employed anywhere ever again after receiving national attention for his criminal background, in spite of apparently otherwise staying out of trouble and not re-offending. He will be lucky if he can continue to live where he has resided up until now. It is fair to say his life has been ruined, affected far more than the life and image of Scott Walker.

This year, Minnesota joins the states with "Ban the Box" laws, that make it easier for former felons to rejoin society and especially the work force after completing their sentences. Wisconsin does not have such legislation, and Walker has been vocal about opposing it, in spite of the logic that former criminals cannot exist in limbo and will not become productive members of society if they are ostracized and so severely stigmatized they effectively have no life going forward. From the August, 2013 NELP Resource Guide:

In a recent National Employment Law Project (NELP) report, we estimated that 65 million Americans or one in four adults have a criminal record that may show up on a routine background check.
At the same time that the numbers of workers with criminal records have risen, the background check industry has expanded and overall, more employers are now using background checks as an employment screen than ever before. This resource guide documents the cities and counties that have recognized the devastating impact of these trends and taken steps to remove barriers to employment for qualified workers with criminal records,specifically by removing conviction history questions from job applications --a reform commonly known as “ban the box.”

In contrast to the intelligent, enlightened, and compassionately progressive approach we have taken here in Minnesota, Governor Walker and Republicans have chosen alternatively to persecute and attempt to infringe on the civil rights of former felons.

Project Vote asks WI for Clarification on the Eligibility of Former Felons to Help Register Voters
October 15, 2008
WASHINGTON, DC – In response to “accusations” by the Republican National Committee that voter registration drives in Milwaukee had employed former felons to help collect voter registration applications, Project Vote today sent a letter to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board seeking clarification of apparently conflicting legal guidelines regarding whether former felons are in fact allowed to help register voters. As reported in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on October 2, Sean Cairncross, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, attacked the community organization ACORN for employing “at least seven felons as voter registration workers” in Milwaukee during the course of ACORN and Project Vote’s joint voter registration effort, which succeeded in registering over 31,000 low-income and minority voters in that city.

This date, this month, marks the one year anniversary of the epic fail, crash and burn that is Mark Kessler.

Here is the latest of his failures. Presumably he is only dragging this out because it might provide some form of benefits to himself and his family while the termination process continues. It's not like anyone is beating a path to his door to employ him in any other capacity, or likely to again, ever. Kessler has literally shot himself in the hand, and figuratively shot himself in the foot, while his foot was in his own mouth.

Kessler has conducted himself in a consistently unprofessional, unethical, inappropriate and uncivil manner that has resulted not only in his job loss, but in leaving his municipality open to law suits. How prophetic when he speaks here of taking off his uniform that he has been defrocked, as it were, as a member of law enforcement.

In the interim of this past year, Kessler has been at the center of a series of increasingly vocal, and subsequently embarrassing epic failures, each one larger than the preceding disaster he has orchestrated. He is left with nothing but his well-deserved notoriety for failure and foulness.

The conduct of Kessler is so excessively unprofessional, that it is being used as an example in law enforcement training on HOW NOT TO DO THE JOB OF LAW ENFORCEMENT.

Kessler is not alone among law enforcement in the incorrect interpretation of the rights and duties of law enforcement. ONLY our judicial system is permitted to rule on the legitimacy of a law or executive action. ONLY the legislative system is permitted to draft and pass legislation, which then requires the executive branch signatures to be valid, conditional on the decision of the judicial branches of government at all levels.

Anyone attempting to make their own individual determinations in law enforcement are over-reaching their authority and violating the foundational terms and conditions on which that authority is predicated. However at least the law enforcement figures below are conducting themselves in a more professional manner, although they should all still be removed from office in their respective jurisdictions for their failure to enforce the law, or executive orders, unless so directed by the judiciary.

Of course, whether it is Kessler or Arpaio, or any of the rest of these guys, the radical right need to be removed from office for their failure to conduct their respective offices in a professional and responsible manner. Here is another example of how foolish and ridiculous what these people believe:

"You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time."

- Martin Luther King, Jr., Montgomery Bus Boycott speech

"I understand that you have an economic system in America known as
Capitalism. Through this economic system you have been able to do
wonders. You have become the richest nation in the world, and you have
built up the greatest system of production that history has ever known.
All of this is marvelous, but Americans, there is the danger that you will misuse your Capitalism. I still contend that money can be the root of all evil. It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism. I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life.
You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of
your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile, rather
than the quality of your service to humanity. The misuse of Capitalism
can also lead to tragic exploitation. This has so often happened in
your nation. They tell me that one tenth of one percent of the
population controls more than forty percent of the wealth. Oh America,
how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. If you are to be a truly Christian nation you must solve this problem. You
cannot solve the problem by turning to communism, for communism is
based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism that no
Christian can accept. You can work within the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth. You can use your powerful economic resources to wipe poverty
from the face of the earth. God never intended for one group of people
to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject
deadening poverty. God intends for all of his children to have the basic
necessities of life, and He has left in this universe "enough and to spare" for that purpose. So I call upon you to bridge the gulf between abject poverty and superfluous wealth.
"
- Martin Luther King, Jr., sermon, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

And this is not ONLY picking on Baptists - a notoriously conservative group of Protestants; there are similar chasms of belief between different groups of Lutherans, Catholics, Jews and other religious groups, largely based on whether or not they are conservative or liberal, etc.

That the larger, more important message is lost in the push for heterodoxy seems to get missed, in so many ways and in so many different aspects of our lives.

"Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten.
A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of
forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the
ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which
it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in
its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that
would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness —
justice.
"
- MLK, Jr., "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?" 1967

This is the danger of right wing revisionist history.

One week ago, to the day, Jimmy LaSalvia, co-founder of GOProud left the Republican party, because of right wing intolerance and bigotry.

I am not leaving because of one issue. I have never been a single-issue voter. If I were I would have left a long time ago, frankly. It is about a culture, and it is about what is acceptable in American life today and demonizing other Americans simply because of who they are, whether it is their ethnic or religious background or their sexual orientation, whatever it is, is not acceptable.

From LaSalvia's blog via Huff Po:

The other reason I am leaving is the tolerance of bigotry in the GOP. The current leadership lacks the courage to stand up to it - I'm not sure they ever will. ...but there is more work to do to root out the anti-gay and other forms of bigotry in the party.

One of my greatest irritations on celebrating the holiday that honors Martin Luther King, Jr. is to hear our modern radical right Republicans making the claim that they are the party of Lincoln, that the civil rights movement succeeded because of Republicans, and that Democrats are the party of racists and racism, because of the events that occurred during the period of the Civil Rights Movement in which Martin Luther King, Jr. was prominent, and was assassinated.

It irritates me because it does not correctly reflect history then or now. The Civil Rights Movement than - and now - was and is NOT about Democrat and Republican, but about Conservative and Liberal. It was and continues to be the case that CONSERVATIVES have opposed racial equality and have appealed to the racists.

If you doubt that, look at this article from Salon that cites efforts at the time to discredit King and to oppose this holiday. I've heard this same argument years later -- that the violence of southern racists was really all MLK's fault, not the fault of those who were violent (so much for the party of personal accountability):

that “violence was exactly what he wanted,” citing King’s own article in the April 3, 1964, Saturday Review. There King laid out his strategy: Nonviolent demonstrators went into the streets to exercise their rights, and racists resisted by unleashing violence against them, which led “Americans of conscience” to demand federal intervention and legislation. “So,” Stang concluded, “the violence he [King] got was not a surprise” and King “did not dislike it. He wanted it in order to pressure the Congress to enact still more totalitarian legislation.”

Continuing from the same Salon piece:

John Ashbrook did not show up for the hearing, but he joined McDonald in submitting a written statement. “It is not popular and certainly not politically advantageous to speak in opposition to a man who has been canonized by the news media and by many . . . who profess to advocate civil rights,” Ashbrook acknowledged. But “Rev. King’s motives are misrepresented. He sought not to work through the law but around it, with contempt and violence. How soon we forget. When will politicians learn to accept history as it really happened instead of history as told by the Washington Post?” The issue was whether Congress would “support the fictional assessment of Dr. King” by adopting a holiday that would “take the taxpayers for a ride to the tune of millions and millions of dollars” and whether America’s children would “be misled into believing” that King was a great man and learn to speak of him “with the same reverence” they now reserve for Washington and Lincoln.

Opponents to the MLK holiday have included President Reagan and Senator and presidential wannabe John McCain. Reagan actually BLAMED MLK for being assassinated, not the assassin for being racist:

The murder “was a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they’d break.”

Because apparently civil disobedience is what is wrong when MLK was killed, not racism and a willingness to engage in unlawful violence?

This conforms to what I have so frequently observed in our modern conservatives, the pattern of falsely claiming to be victims when they are not. The claim that someone made you attack them, with clubs, and police dogs, and firehoses when they exercised the same rights as white Americans is patently wrong on the face of it. But conservatives eat up that nonsense with a spoon -- a BIG spoon -- and swallow it down with a smile.

Back in the 1950's and 60's, there were liberals and there were conservatives in BOTH the Democratic and the Republican party. The liberals in the Democratic party, like Minnesota's own Hubert Humphrey, put platforms supporting civil rights in the Democratic platforms as far back as the latter 1940s - around the time that Democratic president Harry Truman desegregated the U.S. military in 1948.

Dixiecrats were the original DINOs, Democrats in Name Only. After the passage of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960's, and the support of the federal government for civil rights protesters and desegregation, those Democratic conservatives began the great migration to the Republican party where they were welcomed, and where racism continues to be welcomed. Conservatives were racist back in the day when MLK was alive, and they continue to be.

Turning up the heat on right wing lies

Opinions

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

― Isaac Asimov, "A Cult of Ignorance," Newsweek (Jan. 1980)

We stand with PP

past wisdom

"I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it."Billy Graham - Parade (1 February 1981)

An astute observation from Bertrand Russell

"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."

Penigma is pro-feminism, pro-thought

Ignorance is a choice

Just Do it!

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